Description: The flower heads have 8 to 16 purple rays, golden yellow disks, and 24 to 44 lance-shaped, appressed to spreading, point-tipped or spine-tipped phyllaries (bracts at the base of the flower heads) in 3 to 5 series. The phyllaries have leafy, green, glandular-hairy tips and white, mostly hairless bases. The flower heads are followed by fluffy, rounded, whitish seed heads. The leaves are green, alternate, spine-tipped, and pinnatifid except near the stem tips. The stems are slender, green, and branched. The stems and leaves are minutely hairy with a mixture of regular and gland-tipped hairs.